A Life
by jae-vous
Summary: A series of drabbles revolving around the life of our favorite duo and team. A summer project of sorts.
1. Honor Thy Father

_Just a series/collection of drabbles, a little summer project of sorts. No real rhyme or reason, but I hope you enjoy it all the same :)_

**_jae_**

* * *

It's an empty silence that breeds remorse. Mourning. A vacant, hollow feeling.

Her gut turns painfully. His hand tightens over her own.

Out of her peripheral vision, she watches his strong, broad shoulders tighten and straighten, straining under his dark suit.

Black. The color of the day.

Her eyes fall to the young toddler, shifting from between them to approach the beautifully crafted casket. The white pine makes a striking contrast from the sea of dark mourners surrounding it.

The child stumbles on her shiny and new buckled shoes. Though she's no less enigmatic in the dark attire, Ziva thinks that she's too young to be adorned in the color reserved for final goodbyes.

Her partner reaches out for the little girl, but she softly places her free palm over his; her warmth both stilling the action and capturing his attention. She shakes her head to the side with the barest of movements, admonishing the gesture and effectively righting his transgression.

Their eyes speak loudly in a room rendered silent.

He nods in understanding. She squeezes his hand as reassurance.

They've travelled miles to be here today. Crossed a country and states and borders.

But the last few steps separating them from the foreboding coffin will be the longest distance travelled.

Impossible as they are insurmountable.

* * *

When the call had come, they collected from far and near.

Their fallen leader has gathered them all together once more. United through loss. Orphaned by choice. Blood may be thicker than water. But their bond was forged by loss and bullets and destruction and the deepest of affection and love.

On the other side of the black sea, an even darker haired woman clings tearily against a boy turned a man. Their probie-no-more grips her just as fiercely back; his other arm wrapped tightly around a woman adorning a matching band on her left ring finger. It flashes under the overhead lights, her hand shifting to clutch a boy with familiar, sandy hair and cherub cheeks.

The boy's eyes follow the little girl's progression toward the casket. His mother doesn't resist as he pulls away from her grasp.

They are accustomed to goodbyes. To tragedy. To loss. The nature of their work breeds the familiar company of death. A casualty of their cause and fight.

She hears the echo of his voice in her head, and a smirk compliments the tears that finally fall from her eyes.

_It's different when you have kids._

Even after death, their leader would still always be right.

A generation he would no longer see grow up stand together before his lifeless body. She's sure he would smile if he could see them together now. His kids and their kids.

How far they have come.

Tiny hands intertwine, pulling a choked sob from her throat. Her partner clears his throat, and his arm tightens around her waist, anchoring her as he's always done.

The eulogy names him as one Leroy Jethro Gibbs. But he's known by countless titles.

Each have said goodbye to a parent. She's no stranger to losing a father.

Today, she lays to rest another.

They've come together once again, to mourn and honor a marine. A leader. A friend.

Gathered by grief and love and loss, they will honor thy father.


	2. Siren

_Something a little less angsty than the first installment_

**_jae_**

* * *

Though she will place sole blame on his transgressions, he will claim adamantly she's guilty for their late arrival.

He stirs as she enters the bedroom once more, sporting the highest of ponytails and toned legs stretching on for miles, and it takes little effort to ignore the rivulets of exertion that speak for the summer day only just beginning outside the cool, welcoming bedroom. His shirt will meet the floor in tandem with her running shoes, falling one after the other, and as her hand greedily slides over the stubble along his jaw, she sends a silent thanks above he forsakes his razor for their weekends off-call.

She tastes of salt and something deliciously her.

She tastes like surrender.

The roughness against her cheek elicits a smile he chases with desperate lips, and the tickle against her skin is most welcomed, across her stomach, against her thighs.

* * *

Their late arrival causes several raised eyebrows, including a flash of steely blue eyes dilated with suspicion, narrowed as if the action will help him uncover any deceit. He offers him the coffee they'd picked up, a peace offering for their tardiness. The gruff acceptance and nod tell him he's passed inspection.

For now.

The clock above the proctors head informs him the conference began well over forty minutes ago, but his mind has yet to arrive. His thoughts are still on the tangle of her limbs, the warmth of her hands traveling over his body. That he can feel her touch now does not improve his predicament.

Sixty-two minutes in counting, he still hasn't registered a word.

His hand is not idle; finding and honing in on her bare thigh revealed by the rare skirt she's donned today. He sends a silent thanks to the deities above for this blessed consequence of scorching summer weather.

She doesn't discourage the path of his hand nor his wandering fingers, hidden by the government issued conference table. No evidence of his touch cracking her serious facade. The mask of the trained soldier slips but once; the barest of smiles pulling at the corner of her mouth as his thumb traces a rare spot of weakness that he can always count on pulling a laugh from her throat.

Later, she'll punish him for taking advantage of her, and he'll breathlessly swallow the laugh he chased as she attacks his mouth, all wicked eyes and swollen lips.

* * *

He has become intimately familiar with the tattoo that marks her thigh. She's given up redirecting his hands in the hours that follow their collapse on her sheets. His fingers find the pattern absently, tracing it as he breathes in the smell of her all around him.

His free hand anchors to her hip with a grip she has no hope to escape. She can hear his steady breathing wash over her as he falls asleep, face buried deeply into her wild curls. There's no denying he enjoys the sensation of her lithe body and the way it molds so effortlessly into his.

She wonders how they made so many years without the daily intimacy they can't bring themselves to surface from now.

He's discovered a new religion in the softness of her skin, the feel and weight of her thigh as she curls a temping leg around him, pulling him back in for another taste.

His thirst has no hope of being sated.

They are trouble in every sense of the word. Their charade to the world won't last much longer.

But they can't help run blindly toward their fate.


	3. The Peanut

_I'm having fun with these :o) _

* * *

"You have no idea what you are doing, do you?"

His face is clouded with confusion, mere seconds away from detonating into full-blown frustration. It's a look she knows well, familiar from late evenings spent in the bullpen as he puzzles over case files, a look he adopts when she's mangled yet another infuriating colloquialism.

Another groan escapes him as bones and muscles contort into a position better achieved in his twenties, or at the very least, a minimum of four beers in him. She smirks without sympathy as she turns her head down to look at him, and though he loathes his position on their hardwood floor, the view from below does draw a brief smile from his lips. She's long since given up the attempt to fit into any of her clothes. He cannot deny she's a sight for sore eyes with his shirt sleeves rolled up her arms, inviting, warm skin exposed by loosened buttons. She has traded in her wardrobe in favor of his button ups and much more spacious shirts to accommodate the bump she absently rubs now.

He thinks this might be his favorite look on her yet.

The residing Peanut is the sole reason why he has yet to forsake his commitment to the construction of the overpriced contraption that had arrived earlier in the afternoon, mistakenly labeled bassinet, because whatever these pieces assemble into, he is not convinced it will hold stable enough to accommodate an actual peanut, much less a baby.

And baby makes three.

Her tone is light and melodic, and yes, she is so very amused right now. "Well, Rome was not built in a day."

And he'd be inclined to agree, yet he ponders if the Romans had an easier handle on erecting an entire empire than they would with this loathsome creation that could not have been designed by the modern man.

"I still don't see why we need this thing."

She has lost count of how many times he has protested the task of their day. He flips two identical looking pieces of plastic in opposing directions, his eyes narrowed in suspicion as if the offending objects are being deliberately difficult. He echoes his argument from earlier. "Gibbs built a perfectly good crib, and it came already assembled."

He should not expect anything less than teasing. He is not disappointed.

A dangerous eyebrow arches over twinkling, brown eyes. "Perhaps I should enlist Gibbs for this task, if it is too difficult..."

A noncommittal noise escapes him, causing her lips to pull up in a satisfied smile. Sure, the man would no doubt be able to assemble this contraption in mere minutes, without instructions and the only tool at his disposal being a glass of bourbon. The man has built ships, for God's sake. But he does not think he would ever live it down if he would have to call in his mentor for assistance before The Peanut had even made an appearance.

She takes pity on him only because his mouth does the pouting thing that sends tingles through her stomach in the warmest of ways. It takes her a few minutes to bend and retrieve the instructions, for she now carries the most precious of cargo and tasks that involve any lithe movement are temporarily an impossible feat. Her eyes scan the diagrams, the small, fine print that lists an array of instructions with five times as many languages.

"So tell me, _Sweetcheeks_, those instructions make sense in any of the other languages in your repertoire?"

Molten, brown eyes scrutinize the crumpled pamphlet in her hands, and though none of it appears to make any logical sense to her, she is having far too much fun watching her partner struggle.

Teasing him has always been her favorite past time.

She is fully prepared to deliver a blow to his wounded ego, but with grace she would have never thought he'd possess, he's pulled himself to his feet, winding his arms around her back. Under his palms, The Peanut stirs.

"Well?" His breath is warm in her ear, and she feels his satisfied smirk against the nape of her neck when a shiver betrays her.

Peanut taps back against the steady beat of his fingers, and she takes advantage of his proximity, leaning back to rest against his chest, rolling her head to press her lips along his jaw.

"I have another language in mind."

She lays claim to many tongues, but for so long now, and for as long as she lives, her first language will be him.


	4. A Lesson in Discretion

_The last one for a couple days, I believe. Work and duty call._

**_jae_**

* * *

"I'm just saying..."

A heavy sigh accompanies an eye-roll that she does not bother reeling in. The phrase, she notes, is one this country uses when they have no particular defense prepared. Its meaning is as empty as nearly eighty percent of her companion's movie references he insists on lobbing at her on a daily occurrence.

The surrounding room falls uncharacteristically quiet, the evidence garage vacant now that afternoon has stretched well into the evening. She mulls silently over the spread of bags and tags and countless miscellaneous items, and she thinks the amount of junk they've accumulated from their victim's vehicle could rival the culmination of utter garbage she knows resides in her partner's bottom desk drawer.

She has just scribbled down the coinciding numbers four and zero when the elevator's arrival to their floor detonates in a sound reserved for spacecrafts and vacuum-sealed doors releasing to reveal the character in movies whose purpose is to propel the climax.

She sighs to herself; now he has her thinking in film references.

Her head whips around to place a face on the arriving visitor, and her partner's smile betrays him from behind her back as wild curls are sent into orbit.

"Abby," she announces unnecessarily as the raven-haired woman bounds toward them, a triple bounce in her step suggesting the caffeine intake of today has topped the chart. Their suspicions are confirmed when a cup of her favored, cherry-colored sucrose of choice is pulled from thin air, and lipstick coated lips latch on to the straw that mainlines her source of fuel. Her eyes gaze over their current predicament with the sympathy she typically reserves for them in times of punishment, and with what he thinks may be a hint of amusement.

A cherry stained grin tells him that yes, she is amused.

"Are the children still being punished?"

Impatient hands are thrown up in the air, but he bites back the retort making its way to his tongue. He spares a thought of concern for her definition of punishment, because as he rubs yet another cramp from his wrist, he thinks she is oblivious to what constitutes as torture, toeing the line of both cruel and unusual.

He smiles when Ziva's equally impatient growl follows his pained look in solidarity, albeit reluctantly, because the lack of attention she has been paying him suggests she's still angry with him for why they have ended up on the concrete floor of the evidence garage in the first place.

"Punishment? No. Cruelly regulated to mindless tasks? Yes."

Her growl lacks any real bite toward the most recent addition to their company, which encourages their friend to close the distance separating them and settle between the duo, sucking pleasantly from the cup in her hand.

"He knows." Her voice is not unkind.

He has to fight the urge to duck when their resident ex-assassin swings her pen to dangerously point at him. The pen does not leave her grip, but the smirk in her eyes suggests she clocked his flinch.

"I wonder whose fault that is." The words are echoed from earlier, and just as before, he must stop himself from jumping to frustrated defense.

Their mediator's gaze volleys between them with rapid speed, and he reaches out a hand to lower the caffeine from her mouth warily, chancing he may very well lose a limb. Her look turns sympathetic once more though as it settles on his face, and her tone takes on the air of someone attempting to talk down a violent, unpredictable force.

"Asking for Gibbs to not notice a pattern is like hoping the sun won't set."

A nod of understanding does not wipe the look of irritation from the foreign woman's expression. Dangerous eyes narrow in his direction.

"There should have been no pattern at all," Ziva's gaze flits between them, burning. "You should not even know that we –"

The fire in her voice dies in tandem with the look in her eyes. For the barest of moments, fear makes an appearance on her face. He does not think anyone apart for him would have caught the slip, so long trained in the many expressions and faces of one Ziva David. But Abby seems to sense her hesitancy in the slip of her facade.

"He would have known whether Tony had answered your phone this morning or not," Abby's careful to keep her tone gentle, but firm. Mascara-coated eyes travel over the outfit the other woman has repeated for the fourth week in a row; the wrinkles in the top, the small stain on her knee caused from the drip of her tea three weeks ago. It is the outfit that resides in her go-bag, and one she has clearly reserved for the nights she does not spend in her own bed.

In the recent month, it's been many.

Her words cause the other woman's face to falter, contrite, and the look is most foreign on her. Almost as foreign as the silence enveloping the man sitting beside her. A cup's straw greets air, sucking futilely at the bottom of her now empty drink, and she determines her work here is done.

With relief, she notes the two partners close some of the space she occupied as she gets to her feet. They wait until she's made her way back to the elevator before they release much softer voices, their exchange seemingly less volatile.

The true reason they are in their current predicament needs to be a lesson learned by them alone, and she can only push them gently toward the right direction.

Their punishment has little to do with their lack of discretion as it does with the intended lesson, she knows, their boss is begging them to learn. Because despite the rule he enforces so adamantly, he's prepared to let the two annihilate it absolutely, obliterate it beyond repair. His only caveat; they must learn to communicate. Before the doors slide shut, she sees her reach out a hand toward him.

The scientist smiles to herself.

She's rooting for them. And she is certain they will make it.

They have made it through hell and back, after all.


	5. Tick, Tock

The clock ticks down the remaining minutes of yet another evening spent hunched over tired keyboards, the symphony of their collective tap, tap tapping the only thing keeping sleepy eyes from sliding shut indefinitely. Blinking between strokes, he's learned, keeps his mind from sliding into standby just long enough until he can finish going through the motions of government bureaucracy. And then, like his computer, he will hibernate for what is left of his weekend.

_Tick, Tock._

His eyes drift to the clock when he begins to lose focus on the final paragraph of his report. Three, two, one and 23:00 replaces its predecessor.

He mourns the loss of yet another hour.

His fingers still as he settles back in his chair; now only the steady click of McGee's keys filter through the otherwise quiet bullpen. This, as well as the passing of time, alerts his brain to a certain, missing party. His gaze travels the familiar path toward his partner's desk, his face contorting into a slight frown. Her screen has long since grown dark, a testament to how much time has passed since she wordlessly pushed away from her desk, her destination unspoken, but her path suggesting the facilities reserved for more personal matters and occasionally spontaneous rendezvous. He smirks as the memory of their most recent escapade in the mens bathroom comes to mind.

He doesn't hear McGee's fingers still, and judging by the use of his surname suddenly rippling through the silence, he did not register the first query McGee lobs to him as he's pulled from his thoughts.

"She's been gone a while."

Though the exact thought currently resides in his head, he barely acknowledges the Probie's observation, shrugging his shoulder and tilting his head in a way that he thinks may not reveal his curiosity, but tells his co-worker otherwise.

The younger agent continues on, leveling his tone in response to Tony's serious expression, light and casual as he turns his eyes back to his report. "Ziva's seemed off since this morning."

He falls silent once more, letting his remark hang in the air, cumulating with intensity in Tony's mind. He rubs at the stubble forming along his neck and jaw, recalling the details of the day that were not relevant to the report now abandoned in his documents.

The bruise on his chest throbs painfully.

The report and Ziva's distance are not mutually exclusive. The morning's events, though a casualty of the job and their lives, still shakes them regardless of the familiarity bred by years of experience. The report, while formal, does little to express the personal ramifications that will last for the days to come. The formality of these reports is often helpful, allowing them to distance themselves from the event and process it accordingly, and so he does not mind spending the majority of his evening dealing with the aftermath in a controlled and clinical way, if it means going home and getting a sounder sleep.

And he's thankful he does not need to recount the specifics, for he's not sure he had the capacity to articulate the fire he saw in Ziva's eyes the moment their suspect drew his weapon on himself, nor the blackness that passed through his body when the gun shifted from him to aim just above his partner's living and beating heart. He does not think he is able to coherently explain those seconds he couldn't breathe when he realized she had not been wearing kevlar, nor the minutes that passed as he fell to the ground and struggled for those elusive breaths, the bullet his vest absorbed dead center in his chest when he stepped in front of her. A paragraph nor entire page can capture the momentary fear while second after second passed as his lungs struggled to inhale and exhale, or the relief that came from the shot fired from her weapon, and the way she immediately dropped to the ground to hover over him; her eyes scared, but not terrified in a way that suggested a bullet had found its way around the vest he _did_ wear. He is not naïve enough to think their team had not noticed their tension, nor oblivious to their distance once they completed procedure and processed the scene. But he knows while her tension was palpable for the remainder of the day, something else he'd seen in her eyes had continued to gnaw at her all throughout the afternoon, well into the evening.

He is intimately familiar with her mind, her thoughts, her body, in a way even Gibbs' sixth sense wouldn't be able to detect. Though it goes against his ingrained instinct to press and prod until she concedes to his worry, he will grant her the space she desires.

For now.

His hands have returned to his keyboard, steadily typing away long before she materializes at the partition of the bullpen. He pauses to follow her with his eyes. Her hair falls loosely over her shoulders, hiding her face, and his eyes tighten at the white knuckle grip she maintains on her purse. He fears the worst when she settles in her chair; her face appearing as she looks up from placing her bag at her feet. But instead of the anger he expects to see in her expression, he sees her most carefully neutral face, the one she adopts especially when trying to fool him.

She should know better by now.

He knows she will not bend until they've taken their leave for the evening, and he knows from the little progress he has made in his report, that will be another hour from now. But he knows he can't hope to get anything else done until he's clear on what, exactly, to expect.

He quickly shifts his expression to something just as carefully blank, mirroring her, and calls out to her quietly across the land that stretches between their desks. "We okay?"

Ziva's eyes thaw distinctly at the tension he can't quite hide layered in his voice, and turns a small, but reassuring smile up in his direction. "It has been a long day."

Satisfied, he gives her a warm, knowing smile, turning back to his computer, eager to finish and salvage what was left of their night once they left for home. Her answer made him confident she would not turn him away when he arrived at her doorstep tonight, and the thought drew his attention away from the blank mask Ziva allowed to slip back into place once more.

* * *

The back of her neck prickles with the familiar feeling of being watched. She does not have to look above at the floating catwalk to know who watches her so intently, and she knows that her absence had not gone undetected. She does not look toward her steely eyed observer, and eventually she feels his gaze leave her.

She watches as the time ticks by, long since finished with her report. The ringing in her ears grows louder with every passing minute that leads to midnight, and she hardly hears the kind goodbye from McGee, or the muffled "See you soon," Tony leans in and murmurs, his lips brushing against her ear.

She sits at her desk long after they depart, and she thinks how ironic it is, how time suddenly seems to be passing, hurtling her toward everything she wishes to avoid.

As Gibbs finally makes his way back to the bullpen, turning off his light and passing by her desk, the bag resting near her feet seems to flare with heat, and she knows if she does not come clean now, it was only a matter of time before the culmination of her and her partner's transgressions made themselves known to their leader. He eyes her warily, and on the verge of letting it all free, she diverts her eyes down and waits for him to sigh and pass her.

When she hears the elevator ding, she allows herself to look up, letting her gaze travel across to her partner's desk. Her thoughts travel to the bag still at her feet, and she could hear her time to come clean running out with each passing second.

_Tick, Tock._

According to the glowing plus sign hiding in its depths, they had nine months to figure this out.


	6. The Promise Land

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees it all over again.

He'll consider it the great miracle of his life the mission to the seventh circle of hell turned out the complete opposite of what he had anticipated. Fate gave her a fighting chance and awarded him a destiny he'd long ago written off.

Though thankful, the time that has been taken from them is not forgotten.

The nightmare has ended, but new ones breed and grow in the darkest corners of their minds. While warm and safe and sound„ each of them are not quite whole. Demons lurk in places his warmth can't touch, memories take her just from within his reach.

He doesn't allow her to close her eyes. He does not want her to forget who it is touching her. Teardrops cling to dark lashes as his hands wander her body. He holds her as if she's made of precious glass. She feels just as fragile. With every touch, every uncovered inch, he seeks permission granting him the privilege it is to see her bared before him.

It's months before she's ready.

Self-control is a funny thing. He will swear she will be his undoing, and the months following their time in the desert introduces him to a whole new level of restraint. He never leads, but follows her direction. She has never mastered the art of patience, but has carved the path to self destruction. He's assigned himself willingly to protect her from the instincts ingrained, bred, and taught to her. . She pushes her own limits, and thereby pushes him to the brink of collapse.

She never looks before she leaps.

She'll pull him in with her molten eyes and gentle lips, and his warning dies in his throat as a moan comes from hers. The slower he tries to take it, the faster she'll push, as if she'll be able to outrun the demons this dance awakens. His control will slip the moment he gets the first taste of her bare skin. All she wants is to feel anything else than what befell her. He just wants her to forget. But setting her free has a price. The minute he rolls her under him is when her body goes frigid beneath his rising and falling chest. When her eyes glaze over she allows no other part of him to touch her. It takes long into the night to bring her back from the edge of memories her mind has tumbled down.

Wherever her mind takes her, he will desperately try to follow.

Warm hands and gentle caresses work to replace the marks long since faded and the reminders of cruel advances. He strips away the pain until only she remains, but it will not erase the months they can never take back. Memories may last a lifetime, but he will devote the rest of his to keeping the demons at bay.

She had followed him out of hell, for she knows he will lead her to the Promise Land.

One day at a time.


End file.
